ETHNOGRAPHY of the Dreams

Victoria Pelshe:
- Here he is, the master, straight ahead. Hello! Hello Victor! We have cinema again.

The man near the sculpture:
- You never come in a different way?

Victoria Pelshe:
- No, only this way.
………………………..
- This nightmare comes in the morning, as soon as I wake up. No, not a dream. It is real. I feel it quite well. It comes into me, and I part with it when I see people. When I am alone, it comes back. In reality.
……………………….
- Here it is, a poor barn. Here. ………………………

- I believe Russians have something similar, but Letts have it for sure, it is called the witch-time. It is October-November. October, it is when one can go for mushrooms. This time, there are saffron milk caps near the sea, they are very good, tasty. So, once I went for mushrooms at daytime, about two or three in the afternoon. Suddenly I hear: a single note ‘a’, ‘a-a-a-a-a!’ – and so loud, lingering, and the worst of all, the expression. Such an infinite anguish in the sound.

Engine driver:
- Look here, the dangerous place. Brake test. OK. The fortieth one, we make forty. And the pass is dangerous: besides going up, you also have to go down, and control the brakes of this train. The passenger and cargo train. Just one example: number 3005, it left the pass. The brakes failed. There was an ice-lock in the train, in the brake line. An ice-lock is very dangerous. It can appear in any train if one does not follow the rules. And there was exactly an ice-lock in that train. ……………………
- Turn it off, turn it off! Off, to hell! What? Did it turn off?

Passengers on the platform
The man:
- Kneel, kneel. Will you? You will never kneel.
The woman:
- Please ignore. Don’t make people laugh, you rascal, go away.
Young fellows:
- A family quarrel. A drama, a melodrama.

A man in a taiga winter hut:
- The Master, this is what hunters say, the Master of the taiga. He can come into a hut and stay, live there. He often lives here. Myself, I saw many times things happening: once, suddenly, the wash-stand nipple would start to twitch. As if someone were washing hands at night. The wash-stand, over there. Din, din – the nipple twitching. Once we were sleeping here with Dad, Dad there, me on that bed. Now, I wake up at night because I hear someone chopping the firewood. At first, I thought Dad had gone nuts. Near the bath-house, rat-tat, rat-tat. I don’t know how they call this fear, but it is real. Not of a beast, not of a bear, just some fear, it does exist. I cannot explain it. Just a fear, I don’t know. Grishka says, one fears of loneliness. No, this is wrong. You can call it differently, but there is some fear, some awe, some shudder for the taiga, for the endlessness. You are just a speck of dust. This had been for hundreds of thousands of years before you came and it will be the same after you, unless, probably, a million of people like you come and spoil everything. But the BAM, it did spoil. Maybe not as a technology project, it just drove many people here. People without this taiga religion. They have one goal, to get as much fish as possible. There are some people who need to get as much meat as possible – by all means. Maybe kill, maybe make deer-raisers drunk and take meat. We call such people BAM-people.
One mustn’t argue with the Master. Everyone in our village feeds the Master. But the BAM people do not understand it. They think it is paganism.

The first Evenk:
- Everyone has his own customs. We have our customs, Nanais have theirs, Koryaks theirs, Indians theirs. But we are pagans, we worship fire. Fire is fire.

The second Evenk:
- The stove, it is in Moscow, and here we have fire..

The first Evenk:
- What can we do without fire? No tea, no anything.

A French woman (in Russian):
- Enough? But she liked it. More!
……………………………………
Further, in French
- Chocolates? Where did you get chocolates?
The child (in French):
- I have found. This gentleman…
The French woman (in French):
- This gentleman gave you chocolates? This is so kind of him. Did you thank him? Wash your hands. But roll up the sleeves.
Further, in Russian:
- She has learned it quickly, for we have a tap at home.
…………………………………………..
- Here is all this poetry, folk tales, I liked it so much! For it helps one to live, because it teaches to dream, do you understand?

Further, continues in French:
- When I fill out forms for my daughter, for ‘profession of the father’ I write ‘deer-raiser’. This is a rare profession even in Russia, but for the French, a deer is a fairy creature that drives the carriage of Santa. So when they ask how we live here, I tell them, and they are in ecstasy. Here you are!

A man with a stick:
- These are bullet traces – someone was shooting! And here, someone hammered, see? Look what the swine has written. «Õ», «Ó», and «È». This is what civilization brings, this is what he has written, in these words. Civilization makes one so dumb. Their souls are covered by mould. Even nature tries to cover their words. It will cover this.

The second Evenk:
-But a drawing will stay.

A man with the stick:
- Drawings will revive. But this man, the one who has left this memory… it will pass from generation to generation. Look, people are happy, they dance, the Sun – here is the culture of the ancient man, it is three thousand years old, and this is civilization, the twenty-first century!

Victoria Pelshe:
-Let us go, OK?
……………
- Here. Does the camera make distortions, too? One can fit here a million of legends, senses. While Baikal was asleep, his daughter Angara fled to her lover, to Yenisei. The architect who invited me was building the station in Severobaikalsk. But he also made many stations along BAM. I do not remember exactly which ones. He invited me to decorate the station square in Severobaikalsk. I do not want to look at it anymore. It is painful, to see your life wasted, this is my best monument. It took me eight years, in total. I cannot bear it. Now, the ceiling is going to collapse, the beams are collapsing. I think it will not survive the winter. As soon as there is snow on this roof, everything will be finished.
………………………………….
- Hello, once again. We go left, let us go!
…………………………………
- It has just occurred to me that this is the way to Calvary. It seems that she is indeed buried there alive. Lies there. Oh. It even seems she calls for help right now.
…………………………………
- I didn’t dream of anything but I am so… I want to go to bed. They carried away our fondue, and everything. There is some water left. Gosh, it is so bad with me, impossible to resist. Because I calmed down about my work. Did I snore? Really?

The train conductor:
- Are you going? Did you confuse something?

List of titles.

1. “OLC” Studio presents
2. Long ago, mighty Baikal was cheerful and kind. His love for his only daughter Angara was enormous. The old man cherished her like the apple of his eye. Once, while Baikal was asleep, Angara fled to the youth Yenisei. The father woke up and splashed his waves in great anger. A terrible tempest burst out, the mountains groaned, the woods collapsed, the sky went black in its sorrow, frightened beasts scattered over the Earth, fish dived deep to the bottom, birds flew high to the Sun. There was only the wail of the wind and the rage of the mighty sea. For thousands of years since then, Angara flows to Yenisei. And lonely gray Baikal has become gloomy and terrible. (An old Buryat legend.)
3. ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE DREAMS.
4. Featuring the sculptor Victoria Pelshe.
5. Script writer and director: Dmitry Zavilgelsky
6. Camera: Alexander Vdovin
7. Composer and sound producer: Yevgeny Kadimsky
8. Camera assistant: Vladimir Pirogov
9. Associate director: Victoria Trimalnik
10. Montage: Dmitry Zavilgelsky, Matvei Yepanchintsev
11. Producer: Vitaly Morozov
12. We acknowledge the help of the joint-stock company “Russian Railways”, the Consulate of Latvia in Moscow, residents of the village Staraya Nugzha, Mayor of Tynda Mark Shulz, administration of the village Yutkali, and residents of all villages and towns of the Baikal-Amur trunk-railway.
13. We are especially grateful to Victor Pozharov, Vsevolod Nazimkin, Anton Utkin, Irina Zvezdochetova, Elita Gavele.
14. The film was supported by the Cinematography Service of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.
15. The end. Ó “OLC” studio, 2004.